superstorm sandy stirs up trouble along the east coast for days leading up to this weather phenomenon we heard about cities getting ready for the worst but could the way we live and how we build our homes businesses and infrastructure actually make storms like this even more. and we know our computers and cell phones could be hacked but what about electronic voting machines they are computers after all coming up we'll take a look at how safe and secure these machines really are. and how many how we while little ghosts and goblins load up on treats big handy companies are up to their old tricks sending sweet campaign contributions to the candidate of their choice we'll

tell you the spooky details of this month by billion dollar industry. it is wednesday october thirty first four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our t.v. . wow p.l.o. and everyone today will start with a closer look at franken storm the super storm named sandy pictures of destruction and devastation continue to come in as millions of americans try to pick up the pieces from what is now being referred to as the worst storm in at least one hundred years we want to talk now about the effects of the storm and dissect not so much the weather patterns that led to it but the patterns in lifestyle that led to the extreme damage and wreckage to discuss let's go now to jake jacob remus assistant professor at suny empire state college. first of all how the going there

in new york what have you seen over the last few days good things about all disasters especially this one that they're going to look like so i'm very lucky. to brooklyn where i am. basically on a. just a few miles away people are doing the flooding people are still dealing with. power outages you know. people are dealing part of. new york we're still dealing with water. where to get water when you need power. so people are definitely still. cleaning up dealing with things that sort of basically are absolutely and of course this has brought forth quite a few discussions. after seeing the wrath of superstorm sandy as a disaster historian talk to me about some of the lessons that you've drawn from that. so i think that we see some of the same patterns that we see in other

disasters we see that different people are affected in different ways so for instance in the evacuation zone in new york city. that the creation zone a as it was called people were more than twice as likely that we can donate the residents of public housing than they were in the city at large so we already know that in new york city the people who are already most vulnerable are already forest or the people who are being affected. and that's what we see in new york city but what about what we've seen and some of these other areas the jersey shore you know some of these beach communities that really have gotten her here yet so. one of the one of the things about disaster is that. we build in places where where might be dangerous and we know this and that's true lots of it right we do lots of things that are dangerous and i'm not at all thing that people shouldn't

be living on the jersey shore i'm saying that part of living in the world is having is having risk and part of the question managers and one of the ways we manage risk is by having the government in abingdon of government government programs things like blood or blood i'm sure and things like. and other aspects of the government that protect us when things go wrong. so connect the dots for me because taking a look at new york city as you say a lot of the people already the most vulnerable living in public housing these are the people affected quite a bit and then we had these people at these nice beach homes many of these homes these nice cars destroyed and of course you can't see a storm like sandy and not remember what happened during katrina so so connect the dots here and sort of bring forth a bigger picture sure so at the first got sick and that is to climb it that there's no particular there's no particular way to know what storm is created by

climate change there are big bird case for a long time for fluctuates in intensity and. numbers so we can't say precisely this is a climate disaster but what we do know is that. as russian's rise because of climate change storm surges will get worse we know that it makes us more vulnerable to the to the storms that do happen and there is some evidence that the intensity of storms will increase the number of storms that are particularly bad so that's the first the second thing is as we're katrina we have to look at the way we build our infrastructure right at the end of katrina the streets of new orleans were dropped what happened was the infrastructure that we built the levees collapsed. in your part of the question what is our infrastructure does or does our subway

system allows for us which we can go on to a tremendous amount. good enough for the climate we live in and i think what this week is showing. places like long island where no you don't work for the jersey shore the question is does our electrical grid that have that ability to survive in disaster but think the answer is it's pretty clear we know and it's really tough here because when you take a look for example of the new york subway this is something i was shocked to learn seven million people a day people coming in and out of different parts of new york jersey. and of course within the island of manhattan of course but one hundred five hundred years is a pretty good run to go without having any major disaster of course and now that we have it certainly is an appropriate time to ask these questions is it good enough

so i mean i guess what's the you know how do we measure this here. disasters are disasters for reasons one thing that may have that's why we call them one of the things that makes a disaster is that thing that we rely on every day don't work and we're going to have we're going to have disasters and part of the question is how do we recover from disasters people like me call this resilience how do we society in communities that are very resilient when a disaster strikes so one of the things to look at with the new york city subway is who is most affected by this inability to get it i'm not at work you can see i'm at home but it doesn't matter to me too much i'm a college professor i'm not paid by the hour i'm not at work it doesn't matter the person who is telling me food at the bodega the person who is working at the hotel or the supermarket in low wage contingent or they're not so lucky those people are are extremely dependent on working public transportation and so

it's one of the ways we can see that the disaster that different people differently and and that we need to take that into account in our measurement of what is going on so i guess what's the proposed solution then clearly you're pointing out a problem i think it's a viable problem it's an important one to talk about but but what could be done differently. that's a really good question. i'm not an engineer but i have seen discussions today of past to build. centuries of seagate's super to actually you are from or from storm surges there are various other engineering or technological means by which to protect the city of the city of new york's infrastructure or the well the infrastructure the power infrastructure of long island or jersey for instance to bury the lines of not just the wind that's why you are of my mind

you're very. something that somebody actually power companies have been really reluctant to do but super expensive. but it's a choice it's a choice we make we're going to me just final question for you jacob i want to talk about something that a whole lot of people are aware of and that is that during the storm the path of superstorm sandy there were twenty six nuclear plants i know at least two of them had to shut be shut down part of them out to be shut down the surrounding areas put on high alert talk a little bit about the effect of this and what people who are planning people who are engineers should take into account. i think one of the things that the disaster . in africa shows is that when nuclear power fails really dramatic really it tends to stand on a time when the rest of society is having problems so let's imagine thank goodness

but let's imagine that one of the beach when the stick if you're current and had a real problem that would have distracted the governor and the mayor and the president and every. resource we distracted several people who are now in shelters or people who are now meeting in new york and and egypt and the rest of it and the rest of the eastern seaboard. i think we're really lucky we see the. way to a way to fix that is. because there's no state there absolutely well they can bring us a system press professor at suny empire state college enjoy the day off i'm sorry students are not upset about it but i do want to thank you for being on the show today thank you very much my pleasure well another result of monday's storm was the postponement of our team's very own third party debate that was initially scheduled for yesterday however to ensure the safety of the candidates and our crew the debates will now occur on november fifth just

a day before thought general election. you know we both agree we agree we have to bring the tax rates down i felt the same as the president did governor romney i'm glad. you agree but let's come back to something the president i agree on and the two of you agree that the voters have a choice perhaps you wonder who to vote for when romney and obama agree on so many things remember you do have other options come november sixth tune in to see the second round of debates between the major third party candidates right here on r.g.p. . well when rescheduling we possibly we couldn't possibly have taken into account that one of the debate participants would be detained in texas however as of this morning green party candidate jill stein it was arrested she was protesting the keystone x.l. pipeline in texas this is signed second arrest in less than a month the last time she saw handcuffs it was protesting outside of the second debate between president obama and republican candidate mitt romney. and speaking

of the election i know it's hard to believe but it is now less than a week away but there are still so many people without power without homes and in a whole lot of cases without a way to get to their polling place because of the storm a big question this election for tens of thousands of people how will they vote what would it take for the election date to be moved governor christie moves halloween to next week couldn't the elections be moved as well well as of now there are no plans for that in place that will be a serious issue for so many today we want to discuss also another important issue in this election one that still seems to be ignored by both candidates that growing gap in inequality in america over the last year the occupy wall street movement has brought terms like the ninety nine percent of the one percent into mainstream lexicon they brought the attention of the lack of accountability for banks and those at the top who make decisions that negatively impacts well everyone else but

what changes will be brought about to try to find solutions to these. problems r.j. correspondent kareen important to break this down for us with a look at where president obama and governor romney stand and how this election might highlight one of the overriding issues in this country that finding a solution may not be beneficial to those in power. it's the most expensive political playoff in u.s. history a competition for the country's most powerful position one of the things i suspect governor romney and i probably agree on is let's come back to something the president i agree on no matter who wins the two thousand and twelve election ok. all. the americas ninety nine percent movement will be left with a one percent president regardless of who we vote for wall street wins i mean that's really one of the main messages is that when we're where casting are about we see that we have these corporations giving so much money to candidates and they can't be objective when it comes to the interests of the vast majority of. the

bonus loving industry that ignited america's economic crisis real estate collapse job hemorrhage and foreclosure epidemic. is also on track to break campaign donation records for the two thousand and twelve presidential election each election cycle each four years that cost significantly more they did four years ago so running for president united states is now half a billion dollar undertaking you need a half a billion dollars to credibly run for the president of united states and you're going to raise that from large corporations and wealthy individuals in the case of mitt romney wealth attracts wealth the republican candidate has a reported net worth of two hundred million dollars and according to the center for responsive politics the top eight financial contributors to romney's campaign are wall street banks with employees from goldman sachs bank of america and morgan stanley rounding out the top three at this the five in moment changes come to america. in two thousand and eight barack obama became the largest beneficiary of

wall street backing in u.s. election history. receiving more than forty two million dollars from the finance insurance and real estate sectors it's hard to believe that smart rational guys and big companies with huge reserves. departments in the real understanding of the society are going to give that much money and expect nothing in return so their donation is probably not a charity since becoming president obama's justice department hasn't prosecuted one person in connection to the two thousand and eight financial collapse on the other hand top executives from j.p. morgan chase citigroup and general electric were recruited to work in the white house what we have cemented into place is a system of legalized bribery public elected officials are in essence corporate employees you know the flagrant sort of corruption the ability of this small rapacious class of corporate oligarchy to write the laws write the legislation

create a two tiered system this alternately is going to implode according to a two thousand and twelve harris poll the majority of americans see wall street executives as dishonest and overpaid with an overwhelming amount of citizens in support of tougher regulation. and overhaul the occupy wall street movement began championing last year as millions of americans flooded the streets every. thousands facing brutal arrests. to protest wall street greed economic inequality and corporate influence over u.s. politics. that has election day draws near occupy activists say both candidates have hanjour to their financial donors and successfully ignored the biggest american grassroots movement to be seen in decades we see little difference between the two parties they're both basically imperialist parties and i think that one

thing that i can really do is expose how the democratic system as we have it right now is based michel the political system is so broken in so many ways that the reason that we continue to come out in the streets and raise you know ring the alarm bells around economic injustice and economic situation in our country is. because you know people aren't doing their job millions of americans will soon be heading to the polls lacking support for either major candidate but voting against the one they liked least however with wall street successfully cementing strong ties to both presidential runners some may wonder if the winner of this election has already been declared up or ny r.t. . and there is another major concern with this upcoming election and that is whether or not people who do vote will have those votes counted with quite a few states relying on electronic voting machines with no way to verify votes many voters are concerned that the democratic process could be at risk the christian

science monitor recently published an article titled could evoking machines in election two thousand and twelve be hacked yes it breaks down how these evolving machines are not connected to the internet but hackers can physically manipulate them or target the companies that service them and since nothing is on paper the vote could be altered without anyone even knowing so just how vulnerable is the election process abroad friedman is in our los angeles studios he is an investigative journalist and author of broad blog dot com so brad what's the deal here most of the makers of these machines say security has been updated and there should be no issues do you think voters should be concerned of course they should be concerned whatever the makers of in the machine said about security being updated is untrue i would also add that it's not just the touch screen voting with machines that are a concern those are used by about a third of the electorate but every state all fifty states use computer optical

scan systems which are equally vulnerable to both hacking and simply failure they fail all the time we saw a paper ballot election on an optical scan system down in palm beach county florida earlier this year in march where it named three elections incorrectly it named two losers to be the winning. candidates of the race so the problem is nobody bothers to go back and check those paper ballots to make sure the computers got it right so whether it's the optical scan systems or the touchscreen systems they are both vulnerable to hackers most disturbingly from insiders not from you know voters or hackers outside but insiders that's the greatest concern and as well nobody bothers to you know check to make sure any of these computers got it right after the election what are you suggesting when you say insiders i mean are you talking about the people that own these machines that service these machines are you talking about poll workers what's the concern here well kind of all of the above but

certainly the election officials have access to the central tabulators which in about thirty seconds can be hacked to flip an entire election and if you go back to the to the baker carter election reform commission that was formed after two thousand and four that was a compromised commission by the way yet even they came out and said that the greatest threat to these systems is from insiders from election insiders so these systems are at threat from outside and inside which is why i've been you know calling for some time for paper ballots that are hand counted that can be overseen by the citizenry so that we don't have to trust whether the electronic systems have gotten it right or not they may get the numbers right the problem is we the people have no way to know whether they did or not that i am grave threat to the mark and you know got a lot of people have said you know it's twenty twelve most of us use a.t.m.

machines that spit out a receipt that could then be deposited into an actual ballot box so you have the electronic voting but you know if there are any questions about the result it could just be cross-checked against paper results why do you think this isn't in place well it to a certain extent it is some of these machines do spit out. paper receipts that you don't take a receipt with you because that leads to vote buying and selling and intimidation and so forth but yeah you're talking about a lot of people given that argument i'm just talking about having you know a box there you do your thing it spits it out and i've never seen that i've voted in several different states depending on where i've been living at the time and i've never seen a receipt but just something to leave at the polling place well you can go back go to brad blog dot com find out what happened about two or three years ago to me when i tried to vote on one of these systems the computer mis printed four out of twelve my own votes and it took me about twenty minutes to look and make sure. it didn't

really misprinted did i get it wrong was it the you know my fault was it the machines fault it turned out it was the machines fault but you know studies have shown that eighty percent of the people who use this type of system don't bother to check the paper printout and study at rice university for example showed that of those few people who do check the summary at the end of the balloting some two thirds of them don't notice when the computer has flipped their vote so even if you have a computer printout and even if anybody bothers to go and check it's a counted after the election and nobody ever does even if they did we would not know if we're looking at something that actually reflects the voter intent or not the only way we can know that is if we look at a hand marked paper ballot and there's no problem with those we just continue to imagine that there is and continue to give billions of dollars to private corporations who have privatized our once public election and well i think there's

a lot of different layers that you bring up here of course and we talk about paper ballots people kind of have a little bit of p.t.s.d. from the two thousand election when there was hanging chads and pregnant chads and all kinds of things when these holes were punched another interesting piece of this puzzle is that. even though the individual election boards own these evoking machines the software inside the machines you know is basically proprietary to the manufacturer and that's been confirmed by u.s. courts right so talk about right about transparency here i mean this is a democratic process. and the heart of any democratic process is transparency and there is zero transparency in these systems they're all of proprietary systems you're correct that both the hardware and the software is the proprietary property of these private corporations some of them who have dubious ownership to say the

least we were talking a few weeks ago about the fact that mitt romney's son and his former business partners at bain and some of his top bundlers his top donators to his campaign have now taken over have now acquired a company by the name of heart or civic the third largest voting machine company in the country that should be a concern to anyone but it's not just the fact that you know romney has ties to a voting machine company it's that all of the voting machine companies used in all fifty states all have private ownership who are on accountable to the people and use systems that are one hundred percent on transparent to the citizenry i can't make that clear brad here you have our elections we have a twenty four hour cable news cycle in this society that we live in constantly talking about sort of you know the election as a sporting event this is

a topic i hear very little about you say people should be outraged why aren't they . well one of the reasons and you're right we all cover the horse race on all of the cable channels but very few people cover the track conditions which has as much effect on who's going to actually win that horse race listen but neither of the major parties want to talk about this the republicans don't want to talk about it the democrats don't want to talk about of the democrats like to pretend that discussing these things depresses turnout i've seen no actual evidence to support that is reflective seen evidence quite the contrary that when people hear about this they get mad as hell they want to fight to vote and they want to make sure that their vote is counted and counted accurately but listen we know that the mainstream corporate media only covers what the two major political parties essentially tell them to cover so if they don't talk about it neither will the corporate media and rationally brad friedman investigative reporter for brad blogger dot com thanks so much thanks christine. well you've heard about big oil

and big tobacco those lobbying groups that spend quite a bit of money consume convincing consumers and lawmakers alike that their product is necessary what you may not have heard of is big candy i'm not making this up thanks to the center for responsive politics we now know there's quite a bit of money given to political candidates by the companies responsible for filling up their trick or treat bags so on this halloween day correspondent liz wahl breaks down some of the politicians the biggest candy companies are sweet on. as millions of americans today splurge on sugary treats not only is it making kids happy and hyper it's also a treat for big candies we're talking about the candy lobby and they're dishing out the dough for candidates they want on the menu and it looks like big candy has a sweet tooth for republican candidates the top candy lobby is nestle a company that makes kickout bars and butter fingers in addition to hot pockets in haagen does the prepared food giant spent over eighteen thousand dollars on mitt

romney's campaign less than half of that went toward president obama next up jelly belly jelly bean company known for flavors like chili mango and buttered popcorn their favorite political flavor rick perry followed by rick santorum but despite jelly bellies efforts americans couldn't stomach either candidates as they were defeated in the primaries and the maker of the great american chocolate bar hershey's favorite libertarian leaning republican presidential candidate ron paul donating over two thousand dollars to his campaign but as you can see her she's also tends to back republican candidates many from their home state of pennsylvania but they're actually doling out even bigger bucks on lobbying spending seven hundred seventy seven thousand dollars on trade labor anti-trust and workplace issues so as childhood obesity and diabetes reaches epidemic proportions in the u.s. remember big candy is banking on children reaching for those sugary treats each and

every halloween in washington liz wahl r.t. . all right everyone that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website archie dot com slash usa. download the official location. choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch on t.v. any time. soon it will be the true science technology innovation called the list of

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